Christians in Iraq need our prayers

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Christians living in Iraq need our prayers please read got it from Focus on Jerusalm web site

Your sister in Christ,
Dawna Marie

Iraq Insurgents Making War on Christians

Aug. 2….(World Net Daily) In the latest and most dramatic evidence an all-out jihad has been declared against Iraq's minority Christian population, car bombs exploded outside at least five Christian churches today, killing more than a dozen people and wounding scores more in an apparently coordinated attack timed to coincide with evening prayers. No one knows with certainty how many Christians live in Iraq because they were not part of census statistics kept by Saddam Hussein. However, estimates run as high as 10 percent of the 25 million population. Though news reports today characterized the attacks as the first against Christian churches in Iraq, they were not. WND has chronicled the increasing persecution experienced by Iraqi Christians since the country was liberated.
Christians and churches have received letters in Arabic threatening that if they don't follow Islamic practice and support "the resistance," they will face the consequences: "torture, and burning or exploding the house with the family in it," says Elizabeth Kendal, researcher for the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission.
Mandaean Christians, who follow the teachings of John the Baptist, have been receiving the same threats and suffering the same violence, Kendal says. The unchecked Islamic aggression is forcing the Christians to flee, As WND previously reported, Ken Joseph Jr., an Assyrian who directs Assyrianchristians.com, says several developments that "bode ill for Christians in Iraq are causing believers to flee the nation." Kendal says the Assyrian Christians greatly fear that the history of abandonment and massacre of their minority group is about to repeat itself. Historians regard the Assyrians as the indigenous people of Iraq. In biblical times, their homeland was centered around the Nineveh plains in Upper Mesopotamia, now northern Iraq, where they were visited by the prophet Jonah. The Assyrian Church of the East was founded in AD 33. Some 600 years later Arab invaders put the Assyrians under Muslim domination. Invasions over the centuries nearly eliminated them. The Assyrians fought for the Allies in World War I and were promised autonomy in their homeland upon victory. But they were abandoned to the mercy of the Ottoman Turks when the British mandate was lifted in 1932, resulting in the massacre of two-thirds of the population. In Saddam Hussein's secular state, the Assyrian remnant suffered severely under his discriminatory ethnic policy of Arabization.
Reuters news agency quoted Iraq's security adviser as saying that a key al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was responsible for the blasts, adding to fresh fears among Iraq's roughly 750,000 Christians that they may be targeted by Islamic extremists. "There is no shadow of a doubt that this bears the blueprint of Zarqawi," Mowaffaq al-Rubaie told Reuters on Monday, adding the attacks on Sunday evening were an attempt to drive Iraq's minority Christians out of the country. "Zarqawi and his extremists are basically trying to drive a wedge between Muslims and Christians in Iraq." The Voice Of the Martyrs (VOM), a Christian human rights group, said the attack came just a month after one Christian was injured when a grenade was thrown at a church in Mosul. VOM added that the most deadly attack was against a Chaldean church in the Doura district where, reportedly, at least eight people were killed. VOM, which has close ties to persecuted Christians in the region, urged its mainly born-again Christian supporters to "pray for those injured and the families of those killed." It also said it was crucial to "pray that these types of attacks will not escalate in Iraq" and to pray that Christians will "experience peace in the midst of this terrible storm" and that "Iraq will soon find the peace for which the majority of people are longing." Yet Iraqi pastor Ghassan Thomas told ANS earlier that violence is not necessarily bad news for spiritual growth in the country. "This is the best time. People are hungry for Christ, they need Christ now," he said in his Evangelical Alliance Church where hundreds of people were attending meetings in a rented church building in Baghdad.

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Last Wednesday, our youth pastor preached on the martyrdoms of several of the Apostles. I appreciate this post, because, as Christians we need to realize that persecution unto death is not only a thing of the past, but is rampant throughout our world today! Not only in the middle east, but also China, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Sudan -- just to name a few. I think it's easy for us, as Americans -- who are so blessed with freedom and security -- to forget our brothers and sisters across the globe who suffer in Christ's name. Let's remember to add them to our prayer lists. I challenge everyone who reads this to take just a moment, and pray for those who are being persecuted today. After all, "The fervant prayer of a righteous man availeth much!" In Christ, WT

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